


Jagged Pieces

by sequence_fairy



Series: She Sells Sanctuary [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 19:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12824427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: She’s got fifteen minutes before the recall is charged.





	Jagged Pieces

Above her, there’s the sound of tearing metal and breaking glass. Rose ducks, covering her head with her hands, and throws herself hard to the left. She lands on her side and rolls into a crouch. The bang of an explosion and it’s accompanying flash of light make her duck her head again, and she throws her arms up as the heat of the blast washes over her. She risks a look at where she had been standing moments before and thanks her Torchwood training for what must be the hundredth time this jump.

She gets to her feet and runs. Loud, alarmed voices follow her, but she doesn’t turn, just pulls the recall jumper out of the pocket of her coat and checks the charge. She’s still got another fifteen minutes. Rose looks around, still running, and careens down a hall to her right, boots skidding on bits of broken something that litter the floor. She doesn’t want to know what, she doesn’t have time to wonder. The entire spacedock is going to go up in less time than she’s got.

She races down another corridor, eyes scanning the doors and the signage, hoping against hope to find some kind of pod or  _something_  she can hide away in until the recall is charged. She flattens herself against the wall, narrowly avoiding the shower of sparks and steam that spews from a ruptured cooling line. She breathes shallowly, trying not to inhale whatever coolant they use on this particular station, while gingerly making her way past the still sparking wires that snake out onto the floor.

The station judders under her feet. It’s a death knell if she’s ever felt one. It shakes again, hard enough this time to toss her off her feet and into the wall. She hits it hard with the shoulder she landed on earlier and her breath is knocked out of her in a gasp of pain. The warning lights flicker on and off as the power cuts in and out and Rose digs the rebreather out of one of her pockets, and pops it in her mouth. She’ll have enough air for the recall to charge, but at the rate this place is falling apart, she’ll freeze to death in the vacuum of space first.

She leans back into an alcove, and taps at the screen on her wristband. It reads an alarmingly fast decrease in air quality, and Rose can already feel the rebreather working hard to keep her lungs oxygenated. She checks the recall again. Seven more minutes. She checks the rebreather. Ten minutes left until the air becomes too deteriorated for it too help. The spacedock pitches, and Rose feels briefly weightless in the moment the grav drive sputters before it comes back online.

The announcements over the PA are garbled but Rose can make out the call of ‘abandon ship’ in any language.

She pulls the TARDIS key out from under her shirt and holds it tight for a moment before tucking it back next to her skin. She breathes carefully, holding the air in her lungs as long as she can before exhaling it back to the rebreather to filter and send back. She steps out of the alcove and the entire place lurches. Rose’s boots lift off the floor. Grav drive now officially offline, she makes her way hand over hand down the corridor until she comes to a another intersecting hallway. There are red emergency lights at the end of the corridor to her left.

The station jerks and shudders and Rose feels the give of something deep within it. She checks the recall again, five more minutes. She pulls herself along the wall, her feet floating out behind her. At the next intersecting corridor she runs into some of the station’s crew heading for the escape pod she is now sure is in front of her. A murmuring runs through the crowd at her appearance, but they quickly disregard her in their own pursuit of escape. She joins the queue.

Smoke and steam are pouring out of the vents in the hallways and Rose’s eyes stream from whatever is in it. The power cuts out and flashes back on moments later, but then dies with the sound of a low hum dropping off into silence. The only light now is the intermittent spray of sparks that arcs from the snapped power lines in the ceiling. Rose turns around to check behind her, and sees the glow of flames. Her heart pounds in her chest. She checks the recall again. Two minutes, thirty seconds.

She’s almost to the pod, her rebreather still has five minutes, and she’s going to make it. She lets herself smile around the rebreather.

She’s three people back in the queue when the door to the pod slams shut and it jettisons with the hiss of compressed air. Rose swallows hard around the lump in her throat.  _She will not die on this godforsaken spaceport in the middle of fucking nowhere_. She just needs to think.

She’s still thinking when the spacedock loses its spin and begins tumbling end over end. Rose feels her stomach jump into her throat and then fall to her knees as the hall turns over, then over again. She holds on to the bar on the wall, knuckles white against it. Every time the station completes a rotation, she is slammed against the wall, onto the shoulder she hurt earlier.

The recall beeps. Rose fishes it out of her pocket. Fifteen seconds. She spits the rebreather out into her other hand and stashes it in another pocket. She has to hold her breath now. She hears the  _fwoom_  of a rush of flames and the recall beeps again. She can go. She looks at the rest of the people who’ve been left behind and feels her heart break as she pushes the button.

She’s never sure later if she imagined the screams.


End file.
